Friday, 30 April 2010

Week 31

Will

I have always had a pretty low opinion of coach drivers. They are the losers of the HGV fraternity: not man enough to drive a lorry, not free-spirited enough to take to the open road as a trucker. But now, they have gone too far.

As we approached the car park, it was immediately clear that we would not be spending Sunday at the beach. Where once the Astra had stood alone, surveying the sea like a green sage, row upon row of coaches waited, their fat, sweaty pilots staring dumbly into the middle distance. The car was gone – but, thankfully, not far. It had been towed, along with all the other cars in the car park, to a scrap of waste ground on the other side of the road. Like every other car that had been relocated to make way for the vehicles of men who lack the social skills to drive a bus, it had been broken into.

Calm yourselves – calm. I know you want to find a coach driver, to physically slap him, to shout at his incomprehending face “why couldn’t you have parked your big stupid fridge of a vehicle over there, you fat berk? What was the point of moving everyone else's cars to an unlit car park, just so you could all park together?”, but it would be the futile. You would be Ahab, the tragic hero lambasting the great white whale, for nothing. No – we must rebuild.

Happily, this should be fairly straightforward. For one thing, the thieves broke the smallest pane of glass in the car, the quarter glass. Having found a more suitable parking spot, I spent Monday afternoon fashioning a new window for the Astra, from a piece of wood. This morning, I took delivery of a second-hand replacement pane that I ordered from Rotherham, which is about as close as I plan to get to ever going to Rotherham, so I have been spared the terrifying expense of visiting a mechanic as a foreigner.

Best of all, the thieves only escaped with one thing – my sat-nav. This device has been known to lead me up to sixty miles in the wrong direction, and was once unable to find the city of Leeds. They won’t get far.

"Ooh, you have a wooden window? I've been saving up for one of those for my Porsche."

Christina

Following on from Will's rant last week against Barcelona's alternative types, we found ourselves in a swarm of them on Saturday afternoon when we happened upon La Fira de la Tierra (the Earth Fair) in Barcelona's Parc de la Ciutadella.

There was a pop-up north African cafe where we enjoyed some mint tea in the sunshine, there were drums being beaten with a passion, digeridoos being played, colourful trousers billowing in the breeze, stalls selling organic beer and wheat-free cupcakes, a meditation tent - you get the idea. We passed an area where people were lying on the ground, being massaged by barefooted masseurs.

"Ooh, that looks really nice," I said, contemplating getting in the queue.

"It looks bloody disgusting," Will spat. "I can't think of anything worse than being pummelled by some man's hairy foot."

We pressed on. I was enjoying the laidback, happy, hippy atmosphere until we came to a stall promoting an all-natural, eco-friendly birthing method. At least, I think that's what it was. I can't be sure because I was too horrified by the promotional photographs, depicting a woman in the throes of having a baby, with everything on show, the husband weeping with joy (fear?) in the background. Why, oh why, would you let anyone take pictures of you in this state, let alone allow them to be displayed at a public festival? Far from making me think "okay, I'll pop one out without the help of drugs" this has only served to put me off having children indefinitely. So I'm sorry mum, but there'll be no grandchildren from me.

P.S. You may have noticed we're running a General Election to see who'll be Prime Minister of our flat. I was enjoying a comfortable lead earlier this week, with five votes to Will's three. Someone has since changed their vote from me to Will. I will find out who you are. It shouldn't be too difficult considering a total of eight people have voted and most of them are probably members of my family.

1 comment:

Hi,I'm the editor at the English-language magazine Barcelona Metropolitan and really like your blog. I'm writing to see if you'd be interested in some kind of collaboration with the mag - please get in touch with me at hannah AT barcelona-metropolitan.comthanks, Hannah Pennell